You can鈥檛 keep a good fan down
Having such unbridled enthusiasm hasn鈥檛 always been considered a good thing. But baseball brought fan back.
Being a fan was once a bad thing. But baseball changed that. Here, Los Angeles Dodgers fans cheer for the starting pitcher on May 12.
Gary A. Vasquez/USA Today
Nowadays people feel comfortable identifying themselves as fans. I am a fan of U2, and I鈥檓 not afraid to admit it. There are fans of 鈥淕ame of Thrones,鈥� sports fans, and iced-coffee fans. But having such unbridled enthusiasm hasn鈥檛 always been considered a good thing.聽
Fan probably derives from fanatic, which means 鈥渃haracterized ... by excessive and mistaken enthusiasm, especially in religious matters,鈥� according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (It comes from the Latin fanaticus, roughly 鈥渕ad through divine possession.鈥�) By the mid-17th century, this had become a derogatory term for Nonconformists, religious groups such as Calvinists and Quakers who did not follow official Church of England doctrine.聽
Fanatic eventually became more equal opportunity, and could be applied to any group you didn鈥檛 like and of which you were not a member 鈥� any of 鈥渙ur lunatic fanatic sects,鈥� as Samuel Butler put it around 1680. Its shortened form 鈥渇an鈥� made a brief appearance and then disappeared. 聽
Baseball brought fan back, and when it reappeared at the end of the 19th century it had less of a negative connotation. It still reflected a mistrust of and devaluing of enthusiasm, but this zeal was thought to be simply odd, no longer dangerous.聽
A San Francisco newspaper reported in 1889 that 鈥淪tockton is noted for possessing the worst 鈥榝ans鈥� in the country,鈥� while another discussed how 鈥淭he 鈥榝an鈥� uses his mouth and tongue whenever there is no occasion to use them. People would rather not listen to him but he is irrepressible.鈥� We can see this attitude in other 19th-century words for such passionate supporters: 鈥渃ranks,鈥� 鈥渂ugs,鈥� 鈥渘uts,鈥� and 鈥渇reaks.鈥� There was something suspect about being a fan.
In the 20th century, fan became a neutral and even positive term. Today almost everyone is a fan of something, and we tend to enjoy fans鈥� contagious passions. Unless they can鈥檛 stop talking about comic books or science fiction, and then contemporary slang still scorns them as 鈥渇anboys鈥� or 鈥渇angirls.鈥澛�
Being a fan is now so par for the course that people who are really passionate have coined a word to reflect their devotion: 鈥渟tan.鈥� This word has dark antecedents 鈥� it comes from a 2000 song about a fan who does some horrible things because he feels neglected by his rapper idol 鈥� but millennials and Generation Zers will identify themselves as stans of Ariana Grande or Britney Spears to differentiate themselves from run-of-the-mill fans. It has become a verb, too. If you admire someone or something (seriously or ironically) you can say, as one BuzzFeed writer did last winter, 鈥淧eople Are Still Drinking Iced Coffee Despite The Polar Vortex, And Honestly, I Stan.鈥�